The Human Face Of God: Jesus Christ

The human face of God: Jesus Christ

When talking about the history of salvation, we must be careful not to make the cuts that have often imposed on it. This story cannot be reduced to the Judeo-Christian tradition, as if Abraham’s vocation was the starting point, while the cosmic religion of humanity would only represent a prehistory of salvation. Likewise, the idea of ​​a prehistory in which salvation and revelation are separated from each other must be rejected because this universal history of God with men is marked by several alliances. Indeed, the alliance with Noah, therefore, has a great meaning for a theology of the religious traditions of the peoples of the world outside of the biblical tradition. They are also in a state of covenant with God. They are also peoples of God. The only God is in fact the God of all peoples.

Therefore, two extreme positions should be avoided. On the one hand, it is all the theology of compliance in Jesus Christ of promises and the alliance with Israel, conceived as a simple substitution of an ancient alliance for the new one; On the other hand, of any appearance of dualism of parallel roads of salvation, which would destroy the unity of the divine plan for humanity whose eschatological realization is carried out in Jesus Christ. The divine salvation plan is endowed with an organic unit, whose history marks the dynamic process; The development of this process consists of several interrelated and complementary steps.

Indeed, from the point of view of Christian theology, this means that the God of biblical revelation, as the letter to the Hebrews 1.1 mentions many times and in many ways "throughout history To the nations, with words and facts. It also means that religious traditions contain words that God directs them and elements of truth and grace through which their salvation comes.

In short, these traditions of the world, convey different perceptions of the mystery of the last reality. However incomplete they are, they testify to a variety of self-manifestations of God to human beings in several communities of faith. These traditions are incomplete faces of the divine mystery that will be made in the one that is the human face of God: Jesus Christ.

The particular and universal event of Jesus Christ

In God’s salvation plan for humanity, the event Jesus Christ, according to the traditional Christian faith, occupies the central place; It can be said, the hinge and the interpretation key. In the historical development of this unit plan, Jesus is also the climax. It represents God’s personal commitment to the deepest, most complete and more human humanity. That said, however, we must be careful with certain abuses of language to talk about this peculiarity of Jesus Christ.

In fact, once inappropriate language is omitted, the Christian claim in favor of Jesus Christ, as we traditionally understand it, remains valid: faith in Jesus Christ is not simply the security that He is the path of salvation; but, as Dupuis mentions, "the world and humanity find salvation in him and through him".

However, the uniqueness and the constitutive universality of Jesus Christ should be based on his personal identity as the Son of God. No other consideration seems to provide an adequate theological basis for this. The evangelical values ​​that it promotes, the kingdom of God that announces, their option for the poor and marginalized, their denunciation of injustice, their message of universal love: all these traits contribute without a doubt to establish the difference and specificity of the personality of Jesus; But, none of them would be decisive to make it constitutively unique for human salvation and for him to be recognized as such. 

In addition, the universality of Jesus Christ cannot be allowed to obscure the particularity of Jesus of Nazareth. It is true that the human existence of Jesus, once transformed by his resurrection and glorification, has gone beyond time and space and has become transhistoric; But it was the historic Jesus who became him. The universality of Christ does not erase the peculiarity of Jesus; because according to the said of Jacques Dupuis "a universal Christ separated from the particular Jesus would not be the Christ of Christian revelation".

Jesus’ historical particularity imposes, in effect, irremediable limits to the event of Christ. Just as Jesus’ human conscience as a Son could not, by his nature, exhaust the mystery of God and thus leave his revelation of God incomplete, neither does the event Christ exhausts, nor can it exhaust, the saving power of God. God remains beyond the Jesus man as the ultimate source of revelation and salvation. God’s revelation through Jesus is a human transposition of divine mystery; His salvific action is the channel, the effective sign or the sacrament of God’s salvific will. Despite the personal identity of Jesus as the Son of God in Him’s human existence, there is still a distance between God (the Father), the ultimate source, and that which is the human icon of God. That means that "Jesus does not replace God".

In the same way, although Christ is the universal sacrament of God’s will to save humanity, He is not the only possible expression of this will. In Trinitarian Christology, this means that the action salvifies of God through the Logos as such continues after the incarnation of the logos, as well as the salvific action of God through the universal presence of the Spirit is real, before or after the event Historic of Jesus Christ.

The mystery of the incarnation is unique; Only the human existence of Jesus is assumed by the Son of God. But while only he thus constituted the image of God, other saving figures can be illuminated by the Word or inspired and animated by the Spirit, to become indices of salvation for his followers, according to God’s plan for him for him human gender. The particularity of the event of Jesus Christ in relation to the universality of the salvific plan thus opens new paths for a theology of religious pluralism that gives way to various paths of salvation. Therefore, the particularity of the event of Jesus Christ in relation to the universality of the salvific plan thus opens new paths for a theology of religious pluralism that gives way to various paths of salvation.

Converging roads of salvation

Speaking correctly, it is God and only God who saves. This means that no human being is his own savior; It also means that only the absolute is the last or main agent of human salvation. In the New Testament the title of Savior applies only to God, and to Jesus Christ in a derived way: God saves through Jesus Christ. The main cause of salvation remains the Father, as the Apostle Paul says: "God, in Christ, reconciled to the world" (2 co 5,19). Therefore, it would be an abuse of language to say that religions save, or even Christianity, save [Footnoteref: 9]. What is proposed at this point is to show that God can use other religious traditions also as channels of his saving action; Thus they can become paths, or media, which convey the power of the Savior God; salvation roads for those who are committed to the road. 

To account for the inclusive presence of the mystery of Jesus Christ, constituted as a universal source of salvation in his resurrected humanity that has become transhistoric, two different modes must be distinguished from the mediation of his saving power. In the eschatological community that is the Church, God’s personal presence in the world. However, this complete mediation of the mystery of Christ reaches only Christians, members of the Church-Sacrament who receives the Word of Him and participates in his liturgical, sacramental and Eucharistic life. Can other religions contain and mean, in some way, the presence of God to human beings in Jesus Christ? Is God present to them in and by the very practice of their religion? In fact, his own religious practice is the reality that expresses his experience of God and the mystery of Christ. It is the visible element, the sign, the sacrament of this experience. This express, supports, supports and contains, so to speak, his encounter with God in Jesus Christ.

Therefore, in this specific sense, the religious tradition of others is a good path and a means of salvation for them. Reject this conclusion would be to make the mistake of improperly separating the subjective religious life of the individual person from the objective religious tradition, composed of words, rites and sacraments, in which this life is lived and expressed. Such separation is not theologically viable.

conclusion

Let’s conclude by saying that different religious traditions represent the various ways in which many times and in many ways God has spoken and has given men throughout history. They are not only and above all the tireless efforts of men in search of God, but rather the continuous advances of God towards them. If the other traditions constitute for their followers the paths of salvation, it is that God himself has above all tracked these paths looking for men. This in no way contradicts the singularity of Jesus Christ that we call constitutive.

But this singularity must also be understood as relational. This means that the historical event of the verb made flesh, although it marks God’s deepest and decisive commitment to humanity, it is necessarily part of the whole organic plan of God for humanity. The various components of this unique and organic plan are interdependent and relational. The event of Jesus Christ, constitutive of salvation for all, does not exclude or include, by absorbing them, no other salvific figure or tradition. There is more truth and divine grace in action in the history of God’s interventions in favor of humanity than in the Christian tradition only. The other traditions represent additional and autonomous divine gifts in relation to it. If the event of Jesus Christ takes the history of salvation to its peak, it is not for replacement or replacement, but by confirmation and compliance.

In short, the above will allow us to speak of complementarity and mutual convergence between the mystery of Jesus Christ and other religious traditions. Not of a unidirectional complementarity, as if the other traditions only contained waiting stones intended to find its realization in the Christian mystery, but of a reciprocal complementarity capable of opening the way to mutual enrichment through the authentic dialogue. It is also a convergence, both historical and eschatological. Historical, through mutual enrichment that is the result of dialogue; eschatological, in the sense that the eschatological fullness of the Kingdom of God is the common final result of Christianity and other religions.

Bibliography

1. · Dupuis, Jacques. Christianity and other religions. From the meeting to dialogue. Santander, salt from Earth, 2002.
2. · Dupuis, Jacques. Towards a Christian theology of religious pluralism. Santander, salt from Earth, 2000.
3. · The decree ad people, on the missionary activity of the Church. Available at: http: // www.Vatican.VA/ARCHIVE/HIST_COUNCILS/II_VATICAN_COUNCIL/DOCUMENTS/VAT-II_DECREE_19651207_AD-GENTES_SP.HTML